Lin
Shu-Jing
The
Brightest Star in the Tan-Zih Sky
Of all the people I’ve met in Taiwan,
Lin Shu-Jing is the most painful to write about. I’m on the verge of rage, and
hope, every time I think about her. I never give up believing that one day she
will shine like the brightest star in the sky, the only star visible in the
night sky of smoggy Tan-Zih. On this chilly Christmas morning in Central Taiwan,
I know Santa is looking for her. He wants to find her but even he doesn’t know
where she lives. Perhaps she is hiding from him, too. But Santa never stops
looking for the good boys and girls on his merry way around Taiwan. He wants to
kiss Lin Shu-Jing on her brow and give her the biggest gift in his sack; the
gift called “starting over from scratch.”
Shu-Jing had always been the star in
my wife’s family. The eldest of four children, she was the one destined to
succeed. Endowed with a soft smile, easy-going happiness that she spread all
over Tan-Zih, she was Lin Shu-Fang’s hero, indeed, the hero of the Lin clan.
She was always number one in her classes in elementary and middle school, the
most likely to succeed in life, her parents’ favorite child, to my wife’s
chagrin; Lin Shu-Fang never got the recognition she deserved in her sister’s
shadow.
But then, somewhere in the pressure
cooker that was every school-child’s nightmare in martial law Taiwan, through
all the tests, all the teacher abuse, wall-to-wall homework and noodle-bowl
haircuts with ugly coarse uniforms, Lin Shu-Jing blew a fuse. She had a nervous
breakdown and no matter how much her parents wanted her to make the number one
high school, all Shu-Ling wanted to do was dance, dance, and dance the night
away.
My wife, Lin Shu-Fang, used to be Lin Shu-Jing’s
cover-up. She was paid well, as far as a child is concerned, for not letting
anyone know that her elder sister was breaking curfew, liable to be arrested by
marching soldiers who patrolled the streets of “Free China” as the U.S.A. had
us believe; KM-Taiwan, more in fear of their own citizens awakening than an
invasion from Mainland China that they said would one day be reunited with them
by the Three Peoples’ Principles of Sun Yat-Sen. Lin Shih-Ling broke curfew to
go to underground dance halls, to meet young men, smoke cigarettes, and be
modern in this stoic police state. So many late nights, way after her parents
had gone to bed, Lin Shih-Ling would steal back into the Lin home and pretend
to be back asleep. Little sister, Shu-Fang, would stealthily open the gate just
a tad so Shu-Jing could crawl under and back into bed before anyone found out
she was missing. My wife was sworn to secrecy, and received a cookie for her
allegiance.
Lin Shu-Jing didn’t make the list of
fortunate students who would be placed in Taichung’s number one high school,
and it saddened her father so; her mother, too. He had pushed her and pushed
her to be the number one student. What went wrong? What happened to their
bright daughter, their favorite child? Father wouldn’t believe that the teacher
wasn’t always right, that the school system wasn’t always good, and that his
children weren’t always to blame for all their failures. So he drank, he drank
heavily and crashed his motorcycle into the glass showcases in his laundromat,
lined the four children up against the wall and admonished them for being
failures, for being the embarrassment of his life, indeed, for ruining his
hard-working life. Shu-Jing would have none of that. She sneaked out as he snored
to find a new clandestine dance hall, listen to banned music, to escape from
the pressures of Taiwan and her family.
And Lin Shu-Jing parlayed her
confidence into ventures that would get her out of her blue collar background.
After a period of stuffing herself with comfort food to ward off the demons
from her failed academic pursuits; she knew she was better than that. She would
make it without being in the number one high school.
Lin Shu-Jing had many friends and
classmates in the clandestine night clubs she visited, young men and women who,
like her, had rejected the stiff life reserved for them in this last of the
fascist dictatorships; there was nothing ‘free’ about ‘free China.’ Everything
from your hair length and style to your school uniform was regulated by the
authorities, authorities that, to this day, place a military advisor in every
public school. Listen to the metal taps on the boots of the brigades marching
through the streets after nightfall. Feel the white terror of curfew Lin Shu-Jing
tried to ignore and slip into the world of ICRT, the American military radio
station with Casey Kasem’s Top 40 playing Philadelphia Freedom. Nowadays, the
American CIA has learned more from the KMT white terror with its ‘see
something, say something’ policy than they taught though ugly American
occupation, the ‘R&R’ resort spot from Vietnam slaughter. In Lin Shu-Jing’s
‘Free China,’ noisy planes flew the sky at night dropping leaflets exhorting
finders to bring such notes to their nearest police station to win a prize for
fighting the evil communist terrorists. The western world seemed a lot more fun
to Lin Shu-Jing with its rock and roll music, cosmetics, lingerie, and style. She
brought this style home, secretly to her sister, my wife, who kept her secrets
and internalized Lin Shu-Jing’s open mind.
Her parents knew their daughter was
changing. She wasn’t going to be a scholar at Taiwan University one day. Father
led the way, begrudgingly, accepting his daughters’ westernization, to an
extent. He punished her brutally when he discovered she was sneaking out at
night to go to dance clubs, not because he didn’t like dance clubs, but he
didn’t want the neighbors to know his daughter was breaking curfew and even
worse, could be arrested. What a face-loser that would be!
So when Lin Shu-Jing spent hours on
the phone with her modern friends from the junior college, an extended high
school, father let her; she was still his first and favorite child. One friend
had gotten a job at a lingerie factory. That was exciting; western lingerie.
Lin Shih-Ling herself had graduated from junior college and gotten a job in a
factory but she didn’t like that.
She had done well enough with school
subjects in school to start a class, first in the empty store front of a friend
and then in her father’s dry cleaning store front, teaching children after school.
An early after-school teacher she was, way before the bushiban chains, and her knowledge
and positively effervescent personality propelled her to success. The students
stayed to learn, and more came. She convinced father to let her use the shack
up the street to expand her school classes, and business was taking off. But
Lin Shu-Jing wanted to get closer to the western world than merely teaching the
English to Taiwanese children.
This is where this story changes into
a tragedy; two deaths in the family within two years! Lin Shu-Ling, my wife Lin
Shu-Fang, and my brother-in-law Lin Shu-Din had another brother, Lin Shu-Shin. He
passed away at twenty-one, when Lin Shu-Jing was just getting started in her
career. Like their family wasn’t saddened enough, mother passed away from the
same illness; liver cancer, two years later! Dear readers, could you imagine how
broken up this Lin family was? Could you? I don’t have to imagine. I was there,
though in far-away Taipei, falling in love with my sweet young wife-to-be, only
twenty-one years old herself. When she got the call that her mother was going
to die, I was there to catch every tear, but the tears stopped. The hard life
they lived taught them how to do it. Father closed his laundry business; he
couldn’t go on without his son and his wife. Somehow, the Lin family carried
on. Lin Shu-Jing carried on. She really got carried away.
Lin Shu-Jing asked father to let her take his
shack down the street and turn it into a boutique, father agreed.
“The lights over there will make the lingerie
more beautiful,” said a nondescript crew chief in a thin short-sleeved
button-down shirt. “And these high-intensity lights will highlight whatever you
put on these racks.”
“Wonderful! Let’s do it!” exclaimed
Lin Shu-Jing. My wife stood by her side. She agreed with the decision. Her
sister was her hero.
“Yes, it will look fine with the
rosewood veneer.” The crew chief with the modern haircut motioned to one of the
carpenters who took his pencil and wrote down ‘rosewood’ to the blueprint drawn
on the wall. A new lingerie boutique
being built out of father’s extra space would be painted over once the woodwork
was done.
Braziers, panties, nightgowns, flimsy
blouses and accessories would keep them away from the west-facing storefront
windows magnifying the blazing sun, entering the boutique and changing clothes’
colors. The boutique would fulfill her dream of entrepreneurship and her
classmate’s lingerie line would be spiced with items she’d purchased on trips
to Hong Kong.
Dad didn’t need the space in the
simple one-story frame flat with a second plywood loft. After the tragedy of
his wife’s passing, it would keep his favorite daughter occupied and close to
home. It would supplement her income teaching home-study classes.
Business took off like a rocket. Her
students’ parents and fashion-minded Tan-Zih neighbors had a piece of Paris
just down the street. The after-school bushiban classes and boutique put Lin
Shu-Jing on the map in the world of business. She would make her first Taiwan
million dollars ($33,000us) before she was thirty years old. Quite an
accomplishment for a dry cleaner’s daughter!
Lin Shu-Jing had bigger stars to reach
in the limitless sky. A café was in her future; a café to serve the
sophisticated tastes of young upward mobile western-leaning Taiwanese, right in
Taichung.
When you shuck your working-class
roots for some foreign bourgeois ideals, all hell can break loose. Lin Shu-Jing
felt she had to rise from her station in little town Tan-Zih. Her life as the
eldest daughter of a dry cleaning farmer just wouldn’t do. Not that there’s
anything wrong with rock and roll or cosmopolitan fashion but it best be an
embellishment, not a replacement, for your own heritage. Ms. Lin was heading
full-throttle into a capitalist nightmare, a nightmare where money’s never
enough even after you’ve climbed the ladder of success.
“Father, I was thinking about opening
a café,” she said one evening as the family sat watching the news on TV,
peeling lychee over the waste basket, spitting out the black pits.
“A what?” he said glancing over to her
like he’d just eaten a sour one.
“How great! What a good idea,” her
sister was ecstatic for her.
“The boutique isn’t enough?” father
said as he spit the sour lychee meat out, picked out another, and started
peeling.
“I have enough money to invest from
the boutique and the bushiban. With three of my friends investing, I think the
four of us could do it.”
“Like the café I saw on that American
TV show yesterday?” said Leona excitedly.
“Right! Like that. Dim lights, nice
marble tables with candles, even a real Italian cappuccino machine behind the
counter. My friend’s brother is a carpenter with a firm that does restaurant
decor.” Lin Shu-Jing had big bright aboriginal eyes which twinkled with excitement
at the prospect of having her own café.
“Well, I don’t know,” said father. “Running
a restaurant is a risky business with keeping the food fresh and all.”
“My friends have experience,” she
explained. “They know what to do.” She looked at her sister. “Can you help out?”
“Sure. What would you like me to do?”
asked her sister excitedly, hoping to become a barista.
“Could you take over my evening class
so I can be in the café?”
“Oh, that? Okay, but only temporarily,”
she said dejectedly.
“And who’s going to watch your
boutique?” said father sharply.
“Oh father, most of the business there
I can do by appointment or over the phone,” she said assuming he knew what she
meant. She’d never used advertising, anyway; business was all by word of mouth.
With that, Lin Shu-Jing had three
ventures going at once; the home school classes, the boutique, and the café,
all without having to borrow a red Taiwanese dollar.
Why did she do it? Most people would say
because she was capable of doing it. A therapist might have a different
explanation. She had just suffered through the sorrow of losing her mother and
brother to liver cancer. Despite her meltdown in high-school, she had something
to prove to herself and a reason to do it: escape.
The café on the Westside of Taichung, “Four
Ladies’ Breeze,” was beautiful. The carpenters did a great job creating a
modern western ambiance, and the four ladies had a select menu of French
pastries from a local bakery and hot and cold coffee beverages. This was all
before anyone in Taiwan dreamed of a Starbucks.
Lin Shu-Jing worked the counter herself with
her three high school classmates. The boutique was put into mothballs, lingerie
into boxes, and her sister took over the evening class at home, father’s dry
cleaning apparatus having been removed from the space. But my future wife couldn’t
stay long; she had her own destiny.
After she graduated from junior
college, Shu-Fang got a job in Taipei, a receptionist at my after-school
English center. That’s where we fell in love. Then the news of her mother’s
cancer came. She was summoned home to help the family and be with mother.
Reluctantly, her sister returned to Tan-Zih. Meanwhile, I got hepatitis, took
my three children, left my abusive wife, and returned to the States, but that’s
another story.
Back in Taichung, business at the café
wasn’t going well. The café was an idea that was too soon for Taichung
lifestyle. The area, now a fashion center, wasn’t hot yet for a café. Lin Shu-Jing’s
partner had an idea.
“Dad, we’re turning the café into a pub!”
“What?” her father screwed up his face
on an invisible sour lychee. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” is all he
said. “The clientele is rough. It could be dangerous. You’ll have to pay off
hoodlums and the police.”
Lin Shu-Jing listened. “My fellow investors
think it will save our investment. We want to bring in liquor and karaoke.”
Father stood up painfully and began to
walk out of the room. “You better think it over. Be careful.”
One of the regular customers at the
new pub was one tall lump of a man I called “Chip’ n’ Dale,” not the sexy
Chippendale men with six packs, but the cartoon chipmunks with six nuts in each
cheek.
Chip ‘n’ Dale had a thing for Lin Shu-Jing,
among other female interests. He told Lin Shu-Jing he was a college graduate, a
plus in her book of potential boyfriends, and he was tall, dark, and lean with
an air of confidence you could cut with a knife. She neglected the pub, too, as
she went out eating, drinking, smoking, and gambling, scheming and borrowing
money.
Her sister was going away; to be with me in
America, perhaps marry me. Lin Shu-Jing was dumbfounded. How could her younger
sister get married before her? She was a thirty-year-old single woman in
Taiwan. Time was running out. She had to get married soon. Chip n’ Dale would
be the man.
Sure, he had three children from a
previous marriage, two living with him, but if her sister could handle me with
three children of my own, she could do it, too. It might be her only chance.
She married Chip n’ Dale a year after my
future wife came to America and married me.
“Don’t do it, Lin Shu-Jing. He’s not for you!”That’s what
her family and all her friends told her. That’s what her brother and sister
told her.
“You can do better than that,” they said, one by one, but
she wouldn’t listen. She was ready to get married and Chip ‘n’ Dale was the
lucky one to grab the ring, and keep it. Despite all the men Lin Shih-Ling had
met – sophisticated, worldly, responsible, hard-working, and gentle – she went
the opposite direction – provincial, ill-mannered, lazy, blameful, and
arrogant. To this day, twenty-two years later, not much has changed, and still
no one knows why.
“Ba-ba, please come to our wedding.”
“What?
You’re marrying?” He knew it would happen.
Lin Shu-Jing had brought “Mr. Shieh, Chip ‘n’
Dale, with his two kids to live with them earlier in the year.
“Lun-chi-ba-tsao!” (trans: “messed–up.”) But
father was too kind. He went along with it.
They had a big wedding, well beyond
their means, but no one from the groom’s family came. There were five large empty
round tables where his family would have sat. Why didn’t they show up? He had
just gotten divorced from his first wife and his family was mortified.
“Hey Ba-ba, why don’t you divide your property for your
children. Before it’s too late,” said
Lin Shu-Jing at Chip ‘n’ Dale’s suggestion.
“Why?
You can’t wait?” said Father
“Don’t
be regretful,”
“I’m
not dead, yet.”
“Baba, we’re starting our new
kindergarten. We need some collateral.”
“What’s
wrong with having classes here at home or the boutique?”
“We
need room to grow. Help us buy the store-front house. We’ll be able to live
upstairs.”
“How
messed up. Lun-chi-ba-tsao! Lun-chi-ba-tsao!” Father started drinking again.
“Lun-chi-ba-tsao!
Lun-chi-ba-tsao!”
So
they moved out of the Lin home and rented a store front nearby.
Then
they moved to another building, five floors, but only used two. Meanwhile, they
rented another building for the bushiban.
The
telephone rang loudly in the Lin home. “Ba! I’m going to have a baby!”
“Lun-chi-ba-tsao! Lun-chi-ba-tsao! Can
you afford it; you just opened a new school.”
“Ba,
that’s why I called you. We need to borrow money to buy our new home.”
“But
you just rented a new home.”
“Our
place upstairs from the school is too small.” It was tight with Chip ‘n’ Dale
raising his two teenage daughters from his first marriage with them.
Once
again, Father went to the bank and took out a loan for his daughter and
son-in-law. Chip ‘n’ Dale had no bank credit because of past bad transactions.
Lin Shu-Jing had no credit history because all her earnings had been off the
books. They got the loan, guaranteed by Father, but the loan wasn’t enough. The
school needed fixtures, furniture, and a little school bus for Chip ‘n’ Dale to
drive and pick up students.
That’s
when Lin Shu-Jing went to her friends and relatives for loans. All her best
friends were hit upon and her favorite aunt, too. But the loans weren’t just
for the school. They lived a good life together, staying out late, leaving the
elder child to watch the youngsters and baby. Late night snacks of goose meat
and liver, imported liquor and cigarettes, pachinko games; they had a very nice
life and neglected the children, at home and in school.
Chip
‘n’ Dale was a teacher now, teaching the older students because they cried and
complained less when he yelled at them.
“What
are you, stupid or something?” he would say to his class. “Didn’t your parents
teach you anything or are they stupid, too? Sit the hell down and pay attention
or else you’ll get a whack!” That’s the way he taught and that’s the way they
began losing students.
“You
have to stop talking to the students like that,” Lin Shih-Ling pleaded.
“Who’s
the boss around here?” was his response.
“I
am! Don’t you know? This is my school,” she retorted, but a lot that did. He
stopped cursing but he still couldn’t teach very well. The students kept on
leaving.
“From
now on, teach and drive the school bus, okay?” Lin Shu-Jing told him. So drive
the school bus he did. On bald tires he careened around Tan-Zih streets corners
with a cargo of children. Swine had better commutes to the slaughter house.
Luckily, no accidents occurred.
For
Lin Shu-Jing’s best intentions, she let Chip ’n’ Dale play boss. Every good
thing Lin Shu-Jing did, Chip ‘n’ Dale took credit. Every bad thing that happened,
he blamed her. And he blamed his girls from his first marriage for ruining his
life. He treated them like little slaves getting him cigarettes and washing the
floors. Eventually, they ran away from home, but Lin Shu-Jing wasn’t that wise.
“Baba, we need to have a larger home.
We need to move our school to a better location. We’re losing business where we
are located. It’s a bad location. We need to move to be more professional”
“Lun-chi-ba-tsao!
Lun-chi-ba-tsao!” But father gave her the money again. They moved to a new
condominium a few blocks away and moved their school to another location.
Furthermore, they had another child, a daughter this time. The end was near.
“Lend us the money or she’ll commit suicide. She’s home,
crying, right now.”
“Who
says?” her family asked
“She
says! Do you want to take a chance?”
“Let
her try,” they called his bluff.
“So
lose the condo. Finished!” said Father.
Chip ‘n’ Dale and Lin Shu-Jing couldn’t
get their last loan from the family. She went to her friends, all her friends,
and borrowed from them.
“We need the money or we’ll lose the condo! We
can’t pay the mortgage!” Her friend Mazy lent her a million Taiwan dollars
The loan was for a year and Mazy
needed the money back. They didn’t have it.
Lin Shu-Jing borrowed money from an aunt to
pay back her friend.
Her aunt, who loved her niece even
more than she did her own daughter, still trusted her. She lent her niece all
the savings she had but it wasn’t enough.
All of her friends were expecting their
loans paid back and Lin Shu-Jing was broke. By the way, Chip ‘n’ Dale didn’t
ask his family to lend him money and he didn’t have any friends with money to
lend.
So their spending, their gambling, and
their late-night goose meat and liver snacks came to an end.
Their goose was cooked.
They went on the lamb.
They just got in their car with what
they could carry, with their two children, and drove into the abyss heading
south down freeway #1, ending up in Tainan, a city a few hours south of Tan-Zih.
They found an inexpensive place to rent and they hunkered down, incognito, incommunicado.
“No,
she isn’t here. I don’t know when she’ll be back. She left no number.
“No,
she isn’t here. I don’t know when she’ll be back. She left no number.”
“No,
she isn’t here. I don’t know when she’ll be back. She left no number.”
“No,
she isn’t here. I don’t know when she’ll be back. She left no number.”
The
phone calls and angry visits to the Lin home wouldn’t stop. The family had to
change their phone number. Everyone wanted their loan re-paid. The parents
wanted their children’s tuition paid back. The bank wanted the mortgage due.
The condo was going into foreclosure.
Angriest
of all was Lin Shu-Jing’s aunt. She had lent her niece one million Taiwan
dollars, every dollar she had saved for her retirement. I’ve heard that she was
ready to kill herself and had to be restrained. “How could she do this to me?”
she sobbed. “I trusted her! What am I going to do?”
Her poor aunt cried her eyes out for
weeks. Still, Lin Shu-Ling didn’t call, couldn’t be reached, and seemingly didn’t
care what grief she had caused.
“No,
she isn’t here. I don’t know when she’ll be back. She left no number.
“How many year has
it been now?”
“Ten.”
“Ten
years, huh.”
“Ten.”
“Nothing
new?”
“Nothing.”
“Same
old story?”
“Same
old.”
Once,
a few years back, a police car stopped her as she rode her scooter late at
night to get boiled goose meat and liver for a late snack for her and Chip n’
Dale. She didn’t have a license so they took her in for questioning. Found out
she owed the bank money. Found out she owed one friend who sued her money. She
was brought to court. Made to make monthly payments to one friend, one of many;
the others had given up looking for her. All except for her aunt. Her aunt
still wants to know how she could have done that to her. Lin Shu-Jing still
hasn’t paid her back.
Her
children can’t get grants from the government because she’s not registered in a
household; the children are registered at a new friend’s address or they couldn’t
get to school at all.
Lin
Shu-Jing teaches in someone else’s bushiban these days. They make ends meet.
She lives her life through the academic accomplishments of her son.
She’s still married to Chip ‘n’ Dale, a man
who, she confessed, years ago, she didn’t really love and never sleeps with
because of that and his apnea; his mammoth snoring.
As the stars come out in the bright
Tan-Zih sky as the soaked clouds of another typhoon pass west on their circular
path to China, the common people of Taiwan recover from the deluge, sink holes,
broken bridges, drowning, washed away roads and homes, flooded rice paddies and
orange groves. The people move on and they’re happy. They watch TV and gloat a
little over others fates even worse than their own. The friends who lost money
in the storm are happy to be alive. The relatives who lost every earthly
possession still have the love of their families. Lin Shu-Ling is one of those
survivors. Whether she caused or was victim of the storm is unimportant. The
storm is over and it’s time to clean up.
Lin Shu-Jing, the storm is over. It’s
time to clean up. Shu-Jing? Oh, there’s the smell of death around you. Is that
Chip ‘n’ Dale on your back?” Bring out your garbage! The Moonlight Sonata of
Beethoven plays on the sanitation trucks. Lin Shu-Jing, Bring out your garbage.
She is still, and will forevermore be Tan-Zih’s shining star.
“Look Mama, Look! I found
a star in the garbage.”
